


Jelly Babies to Manual

by thricetroubles



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-19
Updated: 2011-09-19
Packaged: 2017-10-23 21:24:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thricetroubles/pseuds/thricetroubles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martin's various encounters with Jelly Babies, throughout his life.<br/>Spoilers Warning: Cabin Pressure S03E04 - Ottery St. Mary</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jelly Babies to Manual

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Jelly Babies to Manual  
> Disclaimer: Cabin Pressure is the property of John Finnemore and BBC Radio 4.  
> Acknowledgment: Many thanks to [persiflage_1](http://persiflage-1.livejournal.com/) for Brit-picking and Beta-reading the fic. All errors are mine.

I.

When Martin was young – around seven or eight, possibly, he could no longer recall this as clearly as he used to - he used to watch Doctor Who. He started with the Fifth and the Sixth Doctors, but the one he liked most was possibly the Fourth Doctor, the one he watched on repeats. To a young child with interpersonal problems (more like he was being isolated by all the “cool” kids in the school instead of having interpersonal problems, because really, his mind reasoned, _if you were being shut_ _out by the others from the beginning, how could you move ahead to have an_ interpersonal _problem?_ ), the Doctor was _cool_. Running around saving the Earth while asking people if they liked jelly babies and all that. And Martin had seen that very popular kid in the school pretending to be the Doctor and asking the girls if they’d like a jelly baby, and the girls giggled and took the sweets, and they looked as if they were having fun. So…

 _Would the other kids in the school like me if I give them jelly babies as well?_

In retrospect, Martin had rather hoped that he had never thought of that ridiculous idea himself. Now Martin was so much older, he of course would have realized that: a, some kids were mean and there was nothing one could do about that; and b, pretending to be Doctor Who like the cool kid in the school did would only make you the laughing stock of the school. But Martin had been young and desperate to be liked by his peers.

Martin had already forgotten what happened in the end. He figured that his mind probably had erased the whole episode so that he would not feel _so stupid_ , _so worthless_. The only thing he knew was that after That Day at School he never joined his brother and sister to watch Doctor Who, preferring to lock himself in his room reading about planes instead, and the barely opened bag of jelly babies had been promptly discarded on the way back home.

 

II.

Three weeks after joining MJN, Martin discovered a… _rather interesting_ company policy.  
It seemed that, no matter where they were flying to, there would always be a bag of jelly babies onboard Gertie.

It all started with Arthur being unusually insistent about playing charades. Douglas, who were more used to handling Arthur than Martin at that time, simply stopped Arthur by a simple question: “Where are the Travelling Jelly Babies, Arthur?” Then, to Martin’s amazement, Arthur immediately dashed out of the flight deck to search for the sweets. At Martin’s questioning glance, Douglas explained with a smirk that MJN had a company policy of hiding jelly babies onboard somewhere ( _rather like on the TARDIS_ , Martin’s traitorous mind supplied), sometimes in the galley, sometimes on the flight deck, and sometimes even in the cargo hold, so that when Arthur was being too talkative, they could send him off to look for the jelly babies. Even Carolyn did that in her house frequently.

At first Martin thought it was a rather mean idea, to send someone off on a chase for a bag of sweets because they did not want to hear him talking non-stop. But slowly Martin sensed the fondness behind the jokes. Was it Douglas’s smirk, that detoured from its usual I-am-smarter-than-you-and-I-am-scheming-again look to a softer, slightly indulgent almost-smile? Or was it Carolyn’s amused glances which followed her son’s searches around Gertie?

But of one thing Martin was certain, was that whenever Arthur cried out in triumph, “Brilliant, it's here!” and the excitement he radiated when he shared his new-found treasure with the rest of the crew was enough to reassure Martin that it was not a mean joke after all. And Martin found himself starting to share an almost-smile as well, thinking that maybe, _maybe_ , liking jelly babies was not that ridiculous after all.  


 

III.

It was a late night in a run-down youth hostel near Düsseldorf when Martin heard about Arthur’s first encounter with jelly babies.

The youth hostel was a rather creepy place, located on the edge of a forest on a hill with no lights outside the hostel after 10 at night. As a result even the more adventurous between them, namely Arthur and Douglas, had to stay put at the hostel. After a exhausting game of Travelling jelly babies, Arthur turned in early and could be heard snoring next door while Douglas, who reluctantly chose to stay in the same room as Martin because Carolyn had booked only 2 rooms and Martin did not snore _as much_ , was feverishly playing Angry Birds on his iPhone on his own bed.

Martin, having nothing better to do then to rehearse his flight plans once again in his brains because he simply was not in the mood for his book on aviation history tonight, decided to start a conversation with Douglas after rehearsing the plans at least 3 times.

“Douglas, do you know why Arthur likes jelly babies so much?”

Turned out that Douglas also had no idea. But Douglas, possibly in a feeble attempt to save his reputation of omniscience, told Martin Arthur’s first encounter with jelly babies (as first told by Carolyn) instead.

 _When Arthur was four, his Grandmother gave Arthur a bag of jelly babies. Upon hearing that it was babies in his hands Arthur had first been most excited, then he'd cried and screamed in distress when Granny suggested Arthur_ _try a jelly baby because Arthur thought that a jelly baby was an actual baby, just a bit smaller in size. Carolyn, slightly embarrassed by her son’s outburst and a lot more proud about her son’s display of compassion, explained to her son that_ _jelly babies_ _were jellies, not babies. Arthur asked then why these sweets_ _were named jelly babies if they were not babies. Knowing how Arthur would be getting all sorts of nightmares if she told them that it was because_ _jelly babies _were shaped like human babies and that some people do like eating baby-shaped jellies, Carolyn told a white lie:__

 _“_ _Jelly babies_ _are called_ _jelly babies _because they are babies of jelly. Just like the grown up jelly, except they are smaller. See?” Upon seeing her son’s large, uninhibited smile on the reassurance that_ jelly babies _were not in any way related to actual babies, and her mother’s bemused smile, Carolyn sighed in relief and prayed that_ jelly babies_ _would forever be shaped in that slightly deformed, not-really-looked-like -human-babies shapes. Or else next time she might not be so lucky…_

And Martin was busy trying to control his mouth. Because he was trying very hard not to admit that when he was a boy he was also first horrified by the idea of eating an actual baby, too.

 

IV.

To the MJN crew, being on stand-by was never fun – unless you happened to be the only Captain of the airline who could manage to dig out all sorts of unfinished forms and flight logs and plans and charts and procedures that needed to be filled, refilled, renewed, filed or re-filed. Or if you were the airline’s only steward who would repeatedly hoover Gertie because he happened to be making the Nth production of _Hoovering Hoover and the Mighty Aeroplane: a Musical._ But today, instead of allowing his friends and family to rot in boredom (or be buried alive by work in Martin’s case), Arthur suggested a game of Jelly Babies Hunt instead. Carolyn, who for once had nothing better to do than to settle the old accounts and balances, and Douglas, who was reading a _Playboy_ disguised as _The _Times__ , decided to humour Arthur since the day also happened to be his birthday. And Martin, being the diligent worker he was, was eventually dared into playing along by Douglas’s strategically placed comment of “I can understand, Captain. Who would want the world to know that he would lose a hunting game to Arthur, of all people?”.

30 minutes into the game the rest of the company started to know better than to ask Douglas to hide the bag of sweets: Douglas, being the first to hide the jelly babies, decided to hide the bag in one of his many secret uniform pockets. He later argued that since he had not left the portacabin, technically the sweets were still inside the portacabin. So, after the first round, whenever it was Douglas’s turn to hide the sweets again, Carolyn would be quick to order Detective Inspector Crieff of the Yard to do a full-body search of Douglas. Never mind that it was not very helpful since the sweets tended to turn up in all the most unlikely places on Douglas’s person – once even in his shoe where the other three had never quite managed to explain how Douglas could have done that. Douglas, knowing that he would have a body-search every time it was his turn to hide the sweets, kept on hiding them on his person just to laugh at the others’ lack of imagination about where someone could hide a bag of jelly babies on his/her person.

At the end of the day, Douglas emerged as the unmistakable winner and managed to outwit even Carolyn. He then proceeded to give the bag of jelly babies to Arthur as his birthday gift – never mind that it was Arthur who bought the sweets in the first place. Arthur, of course, being Arthur with an exceptionally generous nature, shared them with everyone on the Fitton Airfield. And Martin got the first and the last jelly babies and also the bag – which he cleaned and hid somewhere in his attic, like a memorabilia of some sort. Though Martin being Martin would _never ever_ admit that he enjoyed tickling Douglas with Carolyn cheering at his back, and Arthur laughing too brightly to care that Douglas was twitching a little bit in discomfort, but it was okay because Douglas was also smiling.

 

V.

Being stuck in a snowed-in airport was worse than being on stand-by, Martin thought. Around him, everyone’s fuse had been a bit short: Carolyn was anxious to fly as soon as possible because she needed all those scheduled flights to happen in order to keep the company afloat; Douglas was sulking next to Carolyn because it was his special “daughter-weekend” – the one on which his daughter’s birthday happened to fall. Martin had already finished the novel about RAF heroes in the Second World War for the second time, but he thought he was a bit better off because he had less on his mind than his employer and co-pilot. Arthur, being his natural stress-free and cheerful self, skipped away to see if he could get anything from the airport stores.

And he came back with a pack of cards.

Upon seeing Arthur’s purchase, Carolyn and Douglas both displayed similar expressions of annoyance. In an attempt to save Arthur from a heavy dressing-down, Martin asked Arthur to play poker with him. But since Martin did not feel right to play poker for money with Arthur (it would be like robbing the innocent, Martin figured), and Arthur insisted that betting on something would make the game so much more exciting, they eventually agreed on betting with jelly babies instead. Possibly one of the most weird games of poker Martin had ever played, but when Martin started making fighter plane sounds while scooping up his spoils of war and Arthur pretending to be a polar bear playing poker (“How do polar bears play poker, Skip?” “I have absolutely no idea.”), Carolyn abandoned her booking schedules (“No matter how many times more I stare at them, nothing will change, right?”) and pulled Douglas into the game literally (“Unless you are trying to use your sky-god powers to stop the snow, stop sulking!”). Carolyn joined as the Royal Queen of the World – a role which Martin was sure she did not even need any practice to perfect – and Douglas started as… well, a slightly less sulky Douglas who ended up as the Sinister Prime Minister to the Queen of the World (one who tried to take the throne for himself, it seemed), the game made its gradual decline into general insanity.

In the end, the Sinister Minister had won (and since when he did not? Martin thought about how unfair life could be), sweeping the others clean of their respective shares of jelly babies. But Douglas, possibly trying to be a good sport and more probably because he had to watch his weight, shared the jelly babies with the crew instead. Martin thanked Douglas quietly, not only for the jelly babies but also for joining in the game. And Douglas’ brief smile made Martin realized that, maybe it was acceptable, and even necessary, to be beaten by his Sinister Co-pilot once in a while.

 

VI.  
 _  
“Jelly babies?”_  
 _“Jelly babies to manual.”_

Before starting the drive to pick up the piano, Douglas had the good sense to buy a bag of jelly babies (to keep Arthur quiet if necessary). Now when the piano was sitting safely in the pub in Ottery St. Mary while they were flying Gertie back to Fitton, the excitement of a job-almost-turned-disaster-eventually-done finally went off and got replaced by the fear of what-if-Carolyn-knew-that-we-stole-her-plane plus the pain from his ankle, making Martin hissed in his pilot seat. Douglas, hearing the non-verbal complaints but unable to do much since the painkillers were locked up in the van at Fitton Airfield, called Arthur into the flight deck with ice for the Captain. Arthur instead came in with both ice and jelly babies.

Martin, with his mind full of worst case scenarios, like him being fired, being sued, being put into prison because he stole an aeroplane… was not in the right mood to appreciate jelly babies. But after Arthur had helped so much with moving the piano while being wrongly accused of locking the keys in the van, Martin thought that the most he could do for Arthur was to have a jelly baby then thank him. But when he started to put the jelly baby (a red one, Arthur’s favourite. He specially picked this out to cheer Martin up) into his month, Douglas snatched the sweet from his hand and popped it into his month instead.

“Douglas, what are you doing?!” Martin could not believe what his First Officer doing – couldn’t he tell that Martin was already quite unhappy?

“This just happens to be not yours. Nor was the idea of flying Gertie to deliver the piano. While moving the piano was your work, it was my idea to fly it and Arthur was there as well. Carolyn could not fire all of her company because of this… _unannounced borrowing_ if she wants to maintain the operation of the company. And frankly, between the two of you who aren't paid, and me who has been paid less than the market norm, she should be surprised that we have not been borrowing Gertie for our own jobs a lot more often, you know.”

“Yep! That is not your fault, Skip! And I can tell Mum that it was Douglas who locked the keys in the piano!”

“Thanks for the _love_ , Arthur. Now, if you could come out of your martyr/victim-complex induced nightmares, oh Saint Martin, please contact the ATC – we are about to land in case you've failed to notice because you are in your own torture-land…”

Three days later, when Martin could finally walk unaided but was still dreading seeing a seething Carolyn, he overheard a conversation between Carolyn and Douglas when he was about to enter the portacabin to report for work:

“If you are planning to start smuggling jelly babies soon, could you notify me first so that when the Customs find out I will not be laughing so hard that I'll fall over and break my bones?” said Carolyn. Was it possible? Because Carolyn actually sounded bemused rather than… mad.

“Whoever gave you that idea, pray tell?” came the smooth reply of his ever-smooth-talking First Officer, sounding like he honestly had no idea what Carolyn was talking about ( _and was not pretending to be innocent, for once_ ).

“Arthur. Told. Me. That you had sunken so low as to rob Martin of his jelly babies?” _Oh no it was now sounding wicked instead. And that means Carolyn KNOWS about the flights! What will I be facing?_ Martin was now fairly sure that if he did not sit down fast, he would fall down in a panic attack. “And now, will you cease eavesdropping and come in instead, Captain Master Spy? No wait, you are no master spy, more of a failure of a spy really, because I could already see your shadow from the door. Unless clumsiness is part of your disguise?”

Upon hearing Carolyn’s comments on his spying techniques (or the lack of), Martin _did_ fall on the floor in panic. He was not quite sure when and who had picked him up from the floor though, because when his senses came back, he was already in his office chair, with a cup of tea and a jelly baby (that seemingly just appeared out of nowhere) in his hands. All he heard was Douglas the Master Smuggler explaining to Carolyn that even if he were to start smuggling jelly babies no Customs Service on Earth would be smart enough to catch him at it, and he would not be doing it anyway, because then it would mean that he would have to store jelly babies in every corner in Gertie, and Arthur would then know where to find them in Travelling Jelly Babies time. Carolyn countered by suggesting that Arthur possibly would find it very difficult to spot the jelly babies even if they were placed nicely in the galley cupboard for a change anyway.

And then, Martin knew that Carolyn was not mad at him, Douglas was still his openly-scheming-but-secretly-caring self, Arthur was standing behind him asking if he wanted more jelly babies because he happened to know that jelly babies were brilliant and good for people who were unhappy,

… _and then_ Martin’s world was made _right_ again, by jelly babies of all things, really.


End file.
